July 22, 2010

I arrived in Cuenca on July 6 after quite a complicated journey. I can sort of laugh about it now...sort of. It makes me tired just thinking about it and people have told me they need a drink after hearing it so I’ll spare you the details. I will only say that I ended up having to fly north to Toronto, then down to Colombia, then past Ecuador south to Peru, to finally arrive in Guayaquil 26 hours after I left New York. And then, because I arrived in Guayaquil at 1PM and the next flight to Cuenca was at 6PM and I couldn’t bear to spend one more minute waiting at an airport, let alone five hours, I hired a car for the drive to Cuenca, which normally takes 3 hours but because there had been a landslide a couple of days prior there was a one-hour wait to pass the site. And then, there was heavy fog, which always makes for an interesting time traveling on those narrow curving bumpy roads with those sheer mountain drops. At that point I hadn’t slept for around 36 hours so I was not a happy camper. I faintly remember growling at people a few times. I was inexplicably cheered by the sight of this industrious and resourceful woman who set up a make shift restaurant by the side of the road where cars had a long wait to pass. I’m sure it went up overnight and will come down as soon as the opportunity is gone. Ecuadorians are truly hard working people.

So here I am, busy getting my apartment in working order. I should emerge from this phase sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to a nice long rest.

The flight wasn't originally that insanely convoluted but the originating plane had engine problems so we missed the scheduled connection and thus began the adventure. I'm determined to only take nonstop flights from now on!!!